WHAT’S NEXT FOR THE CIO?

While many of the problems that caused CIOs to lose sleep are no longer issues, it is essential for CIOs to turn their expertise both to answering business questions and maintaining an infrastructure that can withstand the technical challenges that every organization is now likely to face.

When I first started in the technology industry, the role of the CIO was largely operational. Their job was to manage lots of different machines and trying to find ways to keep them running smoothly, meeting the needs of our user bases while at the same time keeping an eye on the latest industry developments. Making computers communicate with one another was not for the faint-hearted and involved large amounts of technical know-how and time, with regular performance issues leaving little time for reflection. Today’s CIO, according to a recent survey released by Harvey Nash and KPMG could not be more different. According to the research, nearly two-thirds of CIOs now report directly to the CEO and can boast of an evolving and expanding remit. Almost half say they have experienced significant budget increases, and spend an average of 15% of their time on functions outside traditional IT. Many are in the business of strategic change.

“CIOs no longer have to spend most of their time keeping enterprise systems functional, which has allowed them to build teams around strategic operations rather than constantly bailing out the canoe.”

Anjali Arora
SVP and Chief Product Officer
Rocket Software

So, is this change real and if so, how has it come about?

The largest single transformation was the arrival of the internet. While the effects on consumers have been discussed endlessly, the significance for IT departments is often overlooked. The internet changed everything. Before its arrival, installations, upgrades and backups almost all required disks and delays. Back in 1990, the idea of doing a system-wide update was insane; today we don’t even think twice about it.

The other major change, which took place in the early 1990s, was the advent of laptops. For the first time, users were accessing information from outside the confines of the firewall. That opened up a lot of security issues that many IT departments weren’t prepared to address. CIOs had to learn the best ways to support employees and contractors while also managing potential security breaches. Next came portable mobile devices, which added to the complexity because BYOD (bring your own device) was a real thing. How are CIOs supposed to support people who aren’t even using the company’s standard machines?

Cloud thinking

Today, two major revolutions are changing how CIOs work, and they both relate to the cloud. Firstly, the cloud has changed just about everything in the world of archiving, storage and document retention. Organizations that maintained policies about saving emails and files now have to contend with employees and contractors who may be leaving sensitive information on Dropbox and in Gmail accounts. The other major change the cloud is introducing is the centralization of systems and processes. For example, things like software updates are no longer a manual task; just think back to the days when you had to employ an IT team to go around to each desktop computer and install a new version of a piece of software using a floppy disk. With the cloud, now you can simply wait for the system to update itself via an automated install. This is just one example of how CIOs don’t have to worry about day-to-day systems management any more, and instead can focus on strategic growth and planning for the future.

The rise of the geek

While many of the problems that caused CIOs to lose sleep are no longer issues, CIOs should not be resting on their laurels. It’s true that teams spend far less time keeping systems up and running than they did in the past, as a direct result of so many of the tools we use being based in the cloud. They no longer have to spend most of their time keeping enterprise systems functional, which has allowed many CIOs to build teams around strategic operations rather than constantly bailing out the canoe. Nonetheless, they still need to take enough of an interest operationally to keep the engine running smoothly. Recent horror stories show how easy it is for simple errors to cause a huge amount of damage; the NHS failing to upgrade Windows XP, or BA failing to explain how a single power surge could have taken out two data centers in different locations, leading to the total shutdown of its global operations, are two clear examples.

For CIOs to embrace the changing universe that all of us in IT now inhabit, it’s essential to turn their expertise both to answering business questions and maintaining an infrastructure that can withstand the technical challenges – both accidental and deliberate – that every organization is now likely to face. It’s a completely different world out there, and the CIO has a big role to play in it.